WE WANT YOUR INPUT- TEN SUGGESTED CONCEPTS EVERY YOUTH SHOULD LEARN ABOUT BUSINE$$

From the book – I SAID YES: Real Life Stories of Students, Teachers and Leaders Saying YES! To Youth Entrepreneurship in America’s Schools (www.amazon.com)

TEN SUGGESTED CONCEPTS EVERY YOUTH SHOULD LEARN

ABOUT BUSINESS BEFORE GRADUATING HIGH SCHOOL

(we want to hear from you on what YOU feel kids should know– see below– please weigh in)

Teaching the free enterprise system and encouraging children to start businesses and create wealth are powerful tools that promote independence and self-sufficiency. Over the past 16 years, I have seen countless examples of how teaching entrepreneurship brings the so-called 3 Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic) to life for youth. I actually believe that entrepreneurship is educational freedom and it connects to everything young people are learning in school. It’s a practical lifeskill.

I taught a young man in 1994 who learned to do math by selling T-shirts and another young woman learned to read by selling Avon products. Mathematics is incorporated into almost every lesson plan NFTE (the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship) uses, including the Economics of One Unit, Return on Investment, Income Statement, Rule of 72 and many others. When our students meet business leaders, they write thank you notes and use a dictionary to check their spelling. They also learn to write contracts-a crucial business skill-and often begin reading authors like Steve Covey and Reginald Lewis to refine their skills. Public speaking is also reinforced when each young person participates in a mock sales call and sells to the general public through a NFTE field trip to a local wholesaler followed by a youth trade showcase.

But let’s take a deeper look at the life skills of entrepreneurship. These are the 10 concepts we believe every young person should learn about before they graduate from high school.

CAPITOL HILL AND BUSINESS LEADERS SAY YES! TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN AMERICA’S SCHOOLS

“Entrepreneurship training provides at-risk youth an opportunity to learn how to function

in the marketplace and strengthen their community’s economy. High quality entrepreneurship

training can help ensure a better quality of life for individual entrepreneurs and their communities as a whole,”

– House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller.

“Entrepreneurship education is good for kids because it’s not just about running a business it’s also about running yourlife. The entrepreneurship side is a plus. The future depends on our generation and if we all learned how to run our own business then we would be able to live in a fully functional community. The mere fact that a kid knows about entrepreneurship is a plus in the job field. Society is split into two sections; those that work for themselves and those that work for others. In learning entrepreneurship you learn how to do both so you can work for yourself and work for others and are ahead of the curve.”

– Fantashia Stevens, Youth Entrepreneur

For Immediate Release

PLEASE CIRCULATE